Press

How do you create valuable content that everyone wants to read?

14 March, 2016

The simple truth of government communications is if you’re not effectively communicating the value of your desired outcome, you will never achieve your objectives.Tweet this

Valuable content is the core foundation of content marketing, ingrained in it’s very definition.

The notion of valuable content is not something that any communicator can afford to ignore. “What is it in for me?” the reader asks. If your content answers, solves, or helps your audience you will earn their trust and become an authority in your field.

If you don’t provide value, your audience will go elsewhere.

How do you create valuable content that everyone wants to read?

The qualitative approach

When writing, think about what knowledge your audience may be seeking and what questions they have. What are their needs, wants and pain points? Does your content deal with one or more of these? Each piece of content should answer at least one question your audience has.

For example, this post endeavours to answer the questions: ‘How do I create valuable content?’ and ‘How do I measure the value of my content?’

Spend time getting to know your audience. You’re not going to receive more information than straight from the source itself. Engage directly with your audience in person through face-to-face meetings, phone-calls or surveys (we have a survey coming up for you soon, so keep an eye out for that example!). Surveys are a great way of reaching a large portion of your audience with little investment. Questions should include what topics they find interesting, how they engage with content and what types of content they find most valuable.

The quantitative approach

In addition to asking questions and undertaking qualitative research, you can measure the expected and actual value of your content through some cold, hard metrics. The numbers don’t lie.

Tracking your audience’s behaviour and engagement provides insights into what content is the most popular, and therefore of value, to your audience. There are a plethora of online tools to help you measure your content efforts.

Tools to help you predict the needs and wants of your audience include:

Google Trends – shows you the level of interest in a particular search term which can help you understand what topics are trending and what questions people are asking about certain topics.

Google Keyword Planner – allows you to search for keywords and get historical statistics, predict how a list of keywords might perform and provide similar keywords to include in content.

Shared Count – provides the number of times a given URL has been shared on major social media networks

Once you start collating what content of yours is being engaged with, you can draw conclusions as to what aspect of that content is providing value. What are the common themes? Is it length, topic, style of writing, place of publication? Use this information when creating future content.

Both qualitative and quantitative research of your audience should drive your content strategy. All of these tools should be used regularly to re-visit the goals and objectives of your strategy to ensure you are on the right path.

Remember, with the oversaturation of information in today’s society, it’s essential that you continually strive for value-laden content.

“No government policy priority has ever been delivered succesfully without successful communications” – Sean Larkins, former Deputy Director of UK Government Communications.Tweet this

Each week a staff member puts pen to paper to write about an aspect of content communication that speaks to them, and hopefully, informs you. This is a space where our passion for writing, learning and sharing information comes to shine.